#gabriel agreste's a+ parenting

[uptoolateart]

Okay, so what I was saying in my long Gabriel analysis rings true. (Ha ha...rings....) He changed to be accepted by Emilie's parents.

Deep down, Gabriel probably relates to Marinette. In the story Feligami tell...Marinette could easily be the poor tailor, while Adrien is the heir to the empire, ready to throw it all away for her.

At some point, Gabriel got twisted and sold out his values. It was probably a gradual process, which explains why Emilie initially fell in love with him and then stuck with him despite her unhappiness with him later.

In one of her videos for Nathalie, she said Gabriel got stuck on things. He was good enough for her but not for himself.

When he looks at Marinette, he sees a little of what he used to be. When he gives her that speech about being naive in the fashion world...he's talking about himself, once upon a time. I think he once had a dream like hers, and he let it go, focusing instead on the wealth and status he needed to be good enough for his in-laws.

Now, he envies Marinette, even if he's unaware of it. That's the only reason a grown man would be fixated on her in that way. He's treating her the way Emilie's parents treated him. He has to break her and get her out of his son's life because if he doesn't - if she achieves her dreams of marrying Adrien and becoming a designer without selling out her principles - it means he could have done this too. It will force him to reflect and take accountability for his bad decisions...and he just can't cope with that.

Similarly, when he hurls abuse at Cat Noir about what an ill-mannered child he is, and when he goes to such lengths to control Adrien...I really think he's seeing a reflection of his younger self there too.

Underneath the pancakes and bad dancing and total insanity, the man is nothing but a writhing heap of regrets and won't see that he had so many chances to do things another way.

[gretchenzellerbarnes]

HAPPY 1st ANNIVERSARY TO EPISODE “GABRIEL AGRESTE”

(First broadcast in France on 14th November 2021)

Illustrations by Gaëlle Geniller (@avril_circus), showing the Knight Marinette Dupain-Cheng rescuing the Princess Adrien Agreste from the vile clutches of his villainous father 

[fortuna-et-cataclysmos]

Season 5 and the symbolism of pancakes

Guys, I swear I have a life outside of speculating the meaning behind pancakes in Miraculous...

But seriously, they're important. They symbolise the future (as made explicit in Pretention).

[Small note: they look like pancakes, they're called "pancakes" in the French dub, I don't know if they taste like pancakes, but I do know that they are not "French toasts" as the English dub claims. So I'll stick to "pancakes"]

Illusion

So we are introduced to the pancakes in Illusion, where for the first time Adrien sees his father in the kitchen, preparing breakfast.

Seems benign enough. Gabriel is even considered enough to ask Adrien how he likes his pancakes. He likes them "well-toasted."

Illusion is an episode where Gabriel fakes having changed, and him giving Adrien a choice is in line what that change. Of course, he still manipulates him into making him think that he has the freedom to not be the face of the Alliance, by basically threatening to withhold his newly expressed fatherly love if Adrien refuses to agree with him (more on that in this post). Pancakes are just a device for Gabriel to add to his illusion of good parent, and the illusion that Adrien has a choice.

Passion

Adrien and Gabriel are in the kitchen. Adrien is looking at his extremely decorated pancakes.

As we learn from Nathalie a second later, he likes his pancakes plain. She tells him to not eat them "to please his father", while Gabriel seemingly naively points out that if Adrien didn't want bananas, he could have told him.

Sure he could tell him, except that the last time Adrien asked for something from Gabriel -to not be the face of Alliance-, he emotionally manipulated him to withdraw his request, and even made him wear the said Alliance.

The bananas and the fancy toppings are basically a metaphor for the fancy model life Gabriel wants to give Adrien, while Adrien really doesn't want any of it. And just as many people like toppings on their pancakes, they also would like to have a life of fame, hence think Adrien is lucky (as seen in the S4 Finale). Meanwhile, Adrien doesn't want any of it, he likes his pancakes and and his life plain and simple, "au naturel".

Nonetheless, Adrien still continues eating his father's pancakes, saying that he doesn't mind, that he likes them.

Pretension

This is where the pancake business gets serious.

First, we learn that indeed, Gabriel's pancakes taste bad. Plagg cheers for being saved from eating another serving of Gabriel's pancakes. This is bordering to over analysis but, given that Plagg couldn't eat them while Gabriel is in the kitchen, I assume that's Adrien's opinion which he must have confessed to Plagg at a more appropriate time. And still, Adrien keeps eating his father's pancakes.

Later in the episode, the pancake/future metaphor is expressed very clearly by Gabriel. He tells Marinette that she can have her pancake and life however she wants it, but the one thing she can't do is to share it with Adrien.

He says very clearly:

You think that you have a choice, but all you have is the illusion of a choice. And I decide which choices you get.

And where do we get this exact claim in practice? In the episode Illusion, where Gabriel manipulates Adrien into thinking that he has a say over his future, while Gabriel is the one making all the choices that matter.

And he gives two "choices" to Marinette:

To eat the pancake, receive Gabriel's backing and be a famous designer

To refuse the pancake and have nothing

Once more, the way he frames it, Gabriel gives the illusion that Marinette has a choice, while neither of the two choices includes being with Adrien. So he basically leaves her with no choice but to break up with him.

Now comes the breaking point. Marinette fully understands that the pancakes are a metaphor for her and Adrien's future, and she continues the same metaphor to get her message across to Gabriel (talk about power move).

First, she refuses to eat them. She has "lost her appetite."

This refusal is in contrast with Adrien who kept eating them even though he didn't like them. Unlike him, Marinette "doesn't even need to try them to know that they are bad."

Normally, this is to be understood as her making the choice no 2: refuse the pancake and have nothing.

As such, she is escorted out the kitchen. The scene composition clearly shows that she is stuck between Gabriel on the one side, and the Gorilla on the other.

Because, she refused the pancake. Per Gabriel's rules, she is supposed to have nothing.

But Marinette defies that. Not only she runs upstairs to hug and tell Adrien that she'll never abandon him, but she also gets back downstairs without needing to be restrained by the Gorilla, hence protecting her composture.

Look at how she goes down the stairs, having not only the physical but also the moral high-ground:

She looks so intimidating that in the next frame, even the Gorilla steps aside to let her pass. Both Gorilla and Gabriel are surprised by her move, if you zoom in you can see it in their faces. Gabriel did not expect her to do something outside the two "choices" he had given her.

And then comes the death blow, where Marinette tells Gabriel:

You know what's your pancakes problem? They have too much flour and not enough butter. You use an outdated recipe, no one likes them like that anymore.

Yup. She calls Gabriel's entire fashion, but also life practices, outdated with one simple metaphor. My girl slays.

At the end of Pretention, during dinner (no pancakes here sorry), we see that a parallelling breakthrough happens in Adrien's front.

Gabriel tells Adrien that he can spend as much as time as he wants with Marinette, for he will be in London next year. Again, Gabriel is creating the illusion that he is free to date Marinette, except that, as Adrien now realises, he is not. Adrien gets visibly furious at his father for the first time.

He does quickly calm down, but what is his reaction? He says that he has "lost his appetite," just like Marinette did. The boy who kept eating badly made pancakes with the toppings he didn't like finally refuses to eat the illusions his father is feeding him.

This, coupled with Adrien's terror at going to his room at the beginning of the episode, leaving Marinette alone despite himself, become a turning point for him: he finally acknowledges that he isn't free, and that his father keeps forcing his decisions onto him. Maybe also getting one step closer to discovering/accepting that he is a sentibeing.

All this story, told through pancakes.

[chronicallylatetotheparty]

... Being anti Gabriel is not enough actually.

Wanting to punish an abuser isn't good enough.

You have to prioritize helping the victim.

This is essential to any storyline about abuse and why so many of them fail. Because the motivations or emotions or viewpoint of the abuser is prioritized over their victim.

Felix and Amilie enable Gabriel's abuse because helping Adrien isn't as important to them as their hatred of Gabriel.

Nathalie never prioritizes Adrien's autonomy because she doesn't see him as a person but as an extension of Emilie. Instead focusing on how she feels about Gabriel. Not the harm he causes Adrien.

Why Gabriel wants the wish is NOT as important, was NEVER as important, as Adrien being abused because of it.

Because here's the thing.

Gabriel won.

Not because he beat Ladybug or got the wish or because his plan fucking worked for once.

Gabriel won because the narrative justified his abuse of Adrien and the other characters decided to lie to Adrien about the man who mind controlled him.

Gabriel won because he got everyone else to see Adrien the way he does.

[wield-the-mighty-pen]

The truth isn’t that Gabriel hates Marinette, it’s actually that he’s a Marichat stan and thinks that Adrinette is getting in the way of his ship

I mean can you see the excitement on this guy?!?!

[fu-cough]

Adrien always believed that his father loved his mother extravagantly, and loudly.

It was like a performance, except the look of their eyes and the redness of their cheeks were all genuine.

He would bring her flowers every Sunday morning, placed in a vase with her breakfast tray. He would catch their silhouettes slowdancing to her favorite classical pieces, illuminated by the moonlit sky by the window. He would kiss every freckle on her cheeks, and accompanied her to movie premieres to show the world their love.

And this love became their home, embracing the mansion with warmth and the smell of pancakes every morning (his mother's favorite breakfast dish, his father used to cook for her).

Adrien grew up witnessing this love.

And then his mother fell ill. And his father started to look at him with utter bitterness. Like his mere existence was an offense.

It wasn't long before she passed away (disappeared), and it was as if all of the warmth in the mansion was taken with her, sucked into oblivion, and existing only in memories.

His mother took his father's humanity with her too.

He tried to reach out, he really did. His mother would want him to.

But every way to his father's heart was a dead end. And every day the distance between them grows wider. His father became more visibly irritated with him, treating him more like an employee than a son to love. He avoided him, buried himself with work in every chance he gets.

Suddenly, there were no more Christmases. Or pancakes. 'I love you''s were replaced by stern warnings and orders. No one sings him happy birthday anymore. His father doesn't smile anymore.

His father didn't love him anymore.

Words were left unsaid, but the message was clear:

'It should have been you, son.'

[fernsnouveau]

Chat Blanc and Ephemeral do NOT work as proof for why Adrien should never find out about Gabemoth, or why the love square identity reveal shouldn't happen.

They only demonstrate why Gabriel shouldn't find out that Adrien is Chat Noir.

Because he will then be able to plan and play out how to dump the Gabemoth and corpse mom reveal onto unsuspecting Adrien the most manipulative, traumatic way possible, with the explicit purpose and plan to akumatize him. And, at least in Ephemeral (Chat Blanc is unclear), he still needed to actually mind control Adrien too, it seemed like he would have resisted otherwise.

If the narrative allowed Adrien the growth to accept that his father is abusive, and capable of being a supervillain, if Adrien was allowed to have the character development to process this on his own terms, then he could have been the one to figure out Gabemoth's identity. It would have been more meaningful, and done more for his character arc, than anyone else making that discovery. It would have connected an important personal breakthrough (abuse victim starting to become a survivor by comprehending that they were abused) with an important plot breakthrough (ladynoir finding out who their enemy is). It would have meant that Adrien, who's been forcibly reduced towards blank, passive "perfection" and significantly denied agency and the capacity to have a meaningful impact, could contribute something even if he then wouldn't be able to directly fight against his father.

[chatonnoir]

it’s me boy I’m le Papillombre

insp: post by @baddadmoth

[starryknightwrites]

It absolutely blows my mind how gleefully smug Gabriel is being about his complete and utter control over his son's life, going as far as to purposefully antagonize him over it and wave his inability to challenge him in his face.

It's really funny that he's deriving so much joy from his control over a helpless teenager because he looked like he shit himself back in 'Risk' when "Adrien" stood up to him and he realized he didn't have the ring.

This man is a coward and I really want to see how he deals with a 'cataclysm Mr. Damocles' level angry Adrien without those rings.

[miraculouslycool]

It would be funny to see Gabriel twitching and writhing ever so closer to death in the background of Marinette's cell phone every time she and Adrien are facetiming.

[uptoolateart]

This was so Cat Blanc, too - him preparing to kill his own father, knowing exactly who it is.

[gentil-minou]

the best part of that trailer is that it's clearly a Gabe-centric episode but the part most of us latched onto was his son as the best bunny boy

[fortuna-et-cataclysmos]

[Adrien] doesn't belong to me. Well, maybe a little. But no, none of this matters, because no one belongs to no one.

Ok but I loved this quote SO MUCH.

Media so often gives the impression that when people are dating, they belong to each other. Just the fact that "We belong to each other" is a love confession is proof of that warped understanding that loving equates to possessing someone.

And Marinette destroyed that belief with this one line, giving all the right messages to the younger audiences.

Also, let's appreciate for a second how she doesn't feel entitled to see Adrien as an object that can be possessed, unlike Gabriel, who once more doesn't hold back from puppeteering his son throughout this episode once more.

[chronicallylatetotheparty]

Reminder that Gabriel being the most manipulative he's ever been this season and Gabriel loving Adrien are not mutually exclusive.

It is because Gabriel loves his son that his continued abuse takes on an even worse dimension.

The same is true for Felix.

Felix loving his cousin doesn't make his actions not abusive. Because that didn't stop Felix from taking said actions in the first place.

[2manyfandoms2count]

The fact that the Gorilla's negative emotions just left when he saw Adrien coming up the stairs in Gigantitan, and Gabriel didn't understand why....

[alexseanchai]

I'm almost certain Adrien thinks Emilie's coffin is in the bench the Emilie statue in the backyard is sitting on, and the relevant civil authorities also think this, having granted Gabriel special permission to bury her on his own property

not clear on how else Gabriel would have avoided being asked a number of questions I'm just about positive no one asked, such as "why did her corpse vanish from the morgue" or "who robbed her grave" or "who confirmed her death"

none of this actually rules out magical coma, mind, and I suppose a doppelganger of some description might be in a proper cemetery while the backyard Emilie statue is just a memorial, but the bench looks like a big enough concrete block to contain a coffin, and we know they held her funeral